Move on about the size of the house. The house is big. Its a big house. The neighbors will eventually sell their houses to people that will build a bigger house than Paul and Allison’s home. Look at the dispersal of homes on AMI (or any coastal region) at zillow.com or Google earth. They are steadily getting bigger and bigger.

Its actually a smaller house than you see in areas close to me — look at what is happening at Hilton Head, SC, or on Sullivans Island and the Isle of Palms near Charleston, SC, or the huge houses in Duck at the Outer Banks. Wrightsville Beach near Wilmington, NC is undergoing a very similar evolution with the older single level homes making way for two stories on stilts. I can only imagine what is happening along the Texas coast or California.

In a lot of areas Paul and Allison are under-building considering the proximity of their lot to the ocean.

This evolution is not a bad thing. Google “Atlantic Beach, South Carolina” for an example of where everything is constant. This town is right on the Atlantic Ocean with open beaches and is surrounded by Myrtle Beach to the South and North Myrtle Beach to the north and west. All of the community’s homes are single story, mostly 1400-1900 sf. There are a couple of small motels, a grocer, a few bars and a strip club. The town is about one half square mile smaller than AMI and population is smaller, but there has been no new construction, no new homes built, no new hotels, no investment. However all the 1970s concrete block homes are still in place with no towering “monstrosities”. It is a terrible, terrible place that I would not set foot in (or drive through at night) and I doubt any of you commentators would either. The town is dying despite being directly on the Atlantic Ocean in the middle of one of the biggest tourist draws between New York and Orlando.

Besides, if Paul and Allison wait until the neighbors sell and the new owners build larger homes it may no longer be possible to enter the market for less than a million. And think 15 years down the line when a lot of the area is built up with 3500 – 5500 square foot homes – who will buy a 2200 square foot house unless they plan to tear it down and build new?

Perhaps Paul and Allison should be congratulated on being in the forefront of development instead of berated for building big enough to suit their needs and wants and those of their children.

Trudy: Put a lid on it, girl. They have to build the house above 11 feet. Without any further building, it is taller than all the neighboring houses. Anyone building in that area has to do the same. Paul and Alison’s other problem is that the lot is so small, they have to go 2 stories to get the rooms they need.

The house doesn’t look as imposing as it did in the form of drawings. It will look even better when the next hurricane’s tidal surge scours out the contents of the neighboring single story future victim homes. Those poor people. How foolish they were to build single story homes in a hurricane surge area.

While it’s good silly fun to mix metaphors ad absurdum , A & P are building a rational house that suits their needs and desires, and it’s neither excessive or inappropriate for its environment.

Once more: The current building code in AMI *requires* that the first above-grade story be non-living space (i.e., garage.) No matter who had bought the lot, any house constructed now would loom over the current houses built under a different code.

Am I missing something? Where are the hurricane straps? Our (Florida island) house has straps connecting the floors together, the joists to the floor and the window frames to the surrounding walls. It was all done by the framers. Our house had so many straps there appeared to be more metal than wood. I already don’t agree with concrete footers (they should be 20′ pilings, sunk 12′ in the ground) which can be undermined in one storm surge. Do the straps come later?

Those palm trees at the far left edge of the picture look stressed. I hope they’ve been roped off, to prevent heavy equipment from compressing their root systems. Somebody run a hose over, and give them a drink!

What appear to be non-matching openings for windows aren’t. You’re seeing sheathing, not the framing. I’m guessing the framing behind the sheathing is in accordance with the plans, including Plan B or Plan C. All the contractor needs to do is to cut away the excess sheathing to reveal the rough openings as framed.

No, I’m not giving them a break. Have they given their neighbors a break? They built a three story high house, when they only need a two story high house. Yes, they need elevation, but they don’t need to be anywhere near as high as they are, looming over the houses next door and destroying their privacy and sunlight. The top story is completely unnecessary.

And it’s ridiculous, as wmjrdn claims, to assume that all or even most neighborhoods with smaller houses are crime-ridden death traps. Plenty of modest human-scaled neighborhoods are safe and are places where neighbors care about their neighbors.

Safer, perhaps, than the kind of neighborhood that this is turning into, where each family cares only about themselves. Have we even hard anything about A&P’s neighbors, except that John borrowed water from one and a snarky emark than another didn’t rearrange their lives to suit the power (or was it water?) off plans? Does anyone here believe that A&P give a fig about the wider neighborhood, i.e. in the lack of green planning?

Does building out to the permissible minimum distance from the lot lines leave any room for wildife habitat, which you do find in suburban or rural neighborhoods with small houses?

wmjrdn is right, though, that the long time residents are likely to move eventually, driven out by their neighborhood being destroyed. Who would want to live with A&P’s house looming over them, esp. if someone buys the lot on the other side and does the same thing?

You can probably kiss goodbye the palm tree(s) at the left of the photo. If you want trees to survive construction, you have to fence off the ground around them out to the drip line, otherwise the soil compaction will slowly kill them. Maybe not right away, but over the next 1-3 years.

It’s hard to tell from the photo if that’s what’s happening already, or if they are just undergoing the normal dying off of the lower fronds that palms do.

I too am envisioning what this house would look like if they had restricted themselves to one story above the concrete stuff. It would not be bad. It would not stick out so much like a sore thumb.

The uneven lengths of the third floor windows will be hidden by the porch railing, assuming that there isn’t a horizontal piece in each window, which the drawing does not show. The porch railing on the second floor is amost but not quite high enough to do the same, but in that case the horizontal pieces give it away. The front is actually so busy, with multiple windows some double hung and some not and all the varying sizes, that I would not get worked up bout just that part of it, the whole thing is a lost cause.

If they wanted to build a smaller home that is not on stilts they would have built their “dream home” in the vaunted Star Tribune blog home’s neighborhood. But really, if one had a realistic, cost is no objection choice would anyone prefer Minnesota to AMI? Unless one prefers lutefish and Garrison Keiler to shrimp and sunny beaches I imagine not.

Not every small-scaled neighborhood is a death trap and that was not my term. Although Trudy’s using the term may indicate she did indeed Google Atlantic Beach! Its a fact of life that the smaller-scaled neighborhoods are going to be at the fringes of the desirable localities.

I remember how many people were complaining about the roof deck by saying the small sliver of a view this house will have from the deck is mostly or will soon be obscured by existing homes and new construction.

At a guess, to grow palm trees from seedlings to that height would take fifteen years. To buy some at a garden center and have them planted would cost, what, $300 a pop? (Somebody with local gardening experience chip in; I live in the Mid-Atlantic.) So killing the trees by carelessly failing to protect them is like throwing dollar bills into the tide.

Trudy, while I hate the “looming” aspect as much as you do, I have a similar-sized lot and a house that had to go on pilings (we had to be 10 feet above ground level)

While I would have loved to have built a one-story house above the pilings, the size of our lot would have only allowed us to have one bedroom, great room, kitchen, eating area, master bath, powder room, and a tiny office had we done this on one floor.

Since we have two children, a one-bedroom house just would not have been enough. We are just not that cosy LOL.

Sometimes you have to stop and look at the whole picture, Trudy……… A and P’s lot is very small.

I’m with Trudy.
When did we as Americans lose our respect for each other? Neighborly? Hah, most people cower in their homes and don’t even know their neighbors anymore.
Atlantic Beach sounds perfect to me-especially if it keeps out the McMansionistas!
Like everything, housing goes in cycles and we are at the end of the Bigger is better house cycle
I mean come on, how are your kids going to afford a home -particularly in Florida if all the smaller more affordable houses are gone and only monstrosities exist?
It seems like many of you folks are boomers with plenty of $$ and so probably aren’t aware of what really becomes of overly large houses like this.
They become overcrowded rentals either long term or short term to cover costs.Of course the increased density of humans is more than the area can handle and everyone suffers, including the environment.
But that’s ok with you all right? As long as I GOT MINE , the h%ll with everyone else.

Island Girl – All our hurrricane straps were on the inside (but they were only used to attach the roof to the CBS house). Don’t know what the deal is with this type of construction.

Regarding pilings – the simple answer is – pilings are very expensive. And not used except when absolutely necessary in Florida (like when you’re building breakaway construction on oceanfront lots with coastal dunes). You see them used in very high class places like Key Biscayne – but – for the most part – they are not part of a sub-million $ house budget.

Palm trees are actually pretty tough when it comes to construction. We had one that heavy equipment ran over a million times – and it had all the elevation sticks pounded into it. It did fine. Too bad – because I hated it – and where it was – and finally took it out after we moved in. Except for some palms – like date palms (not a Florida native – but a really beautiful palm) – it is pretty inexpensive to replace palm trees (you’re talking hundreds – not thousands – of dollars).

PMartillo – Talking about neighborhoods in the US is very hard these days. There are so many variations. Where A&P are building – there are lots of snowbirds and lots of rentals. Not much of a community. By the time my 90 year old father sold his house in southeast Florida in 2005 – most of his original neighbors were dead or gone. Such is the nature of south Florida. I live in what might be considered more of a neighborhood. No snowbirds – no rentals. But there are lots of double income families – and – even in more traditional households – where one or the other spouse doesn’t work – or works at home – people’s time is scheduled to the max. Particularly when the kids play soccer or football or golf or tennis – are in swim meets – etc. – you name it – they all do it. Even with people my age – 60ish – between work and community stuff and children and grandchildren commitments – it usually takes me about 3-4 months to schedule a dinner date with friends. The last time we had a community block party was 5 years ago. I have never been to my next door neighbors’ houses for dinner – and they have never been to mine (I invited them when they first moved in – but said they were busy). I have lived in my house for 11 years. I have had 4 different families living on one side of my house – 6 on the other.

I used to think this sense of detachment was unusual and awful. But there was a recent NYT article that says the average person in the US overall now has 1.3 friends – down from 2+ 20 years ago. That’s about how many I have. Who out there can say they live in a great tightly knit community? BTW – A&P’s house is smaller than average for where I live. House sizes here range from about 3,000 sf to 15,000 sf. I don’t think living in a bigger or a smaller house makes one a better neighbor or potential friend. Robyn

We crossed over to [Anna Maria] and the longer we drove, the prettier it got. The houses became spaced farther apart — exposing views of the water on either side — and the palm trees that lined the road became more lush…. I said, “This is it.”
P. Brown

That’s luteFISK, and Keillor. And for the record, I do prefer Minnesota….Florida really doesn’t appeal to me. Beaches, the ocean, yes. I forget the exact numbers, but a couple of years ago, a survey here revealed that if Minnesota got warmer, a large percentage of us would move north. (We may get that chance before long.)

My dream house would probably be a cabin on a lake in northern Minnesota. Given the cost of this “dream house”, I think Paul and Alison may have been better off just renting a house on AMI for Christmas and New Year’s every year. I have a hard time understanding how something can be your “dream house” if you’ve never really put much thought into anything about it. But apparently this is how P & A work, and it seems to be okay with them. More power to them, but it doesn’t really make for an interesting story, because it’s all so random.

“We crossed over to [Anna Maria] and the longer we drove, the prettier it got. The houses became spaced farther apart — exposing views of the water on either side — and the palm trees that lined the road became more lush…. I said, “This is it.”
P. Brown

— Posted by tony”

I’m with you, tony. May I add the quote “They found an idyllic tiny town in Florida”?

Fact is: A&P build a too big house on a too small lot, so this house is another nail in the coffin of a once idyllic town.

Palms are not like other trees. Actually botanists don’t consider them to be trees at all. Their root structure is different–all the roots (hundreds of them) come directly from the trunk with very little branching. A palm, when it’s transplanted, will grow all new roots, which it why palms are often staked after planting. And only when a palm is transplanted should the fronds be cut way back, at other times, if there is any green in the frond, leave it in place even if it is sagging. Palms don’t produce annual rings of new wood like other trees, so they cannot heal from a wound. A hole in the side of the palm is an entry place for disease organisms and small animals. In a typical Florida landscape where people grow grass right up to the palm trunks and then use a string trimmer to trim away the tall stragglers cause great harm to those trees. The next hurricane that comes through may knock it over at the string trimmer line. So mulch around the palms, but don’t pile it against the trunk. That being said, in this situation, some fencing around the palms would prevent not only compaction of the roots, but more importantly keep machinery from gouging the trunk. Ginny

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They've found an idyllic tiny town in Florida, they've bought a piece of land and now Paul B. Brown and Alison Davis are setting out to build their dream house. How hard can it be, they wonder, even though they live 1,500 miles away, they've never built a home before and they don't know anything about architects, builders, local zoning laws or financing? On this blog for Great Homes, they recount their successes and failures and will chronicle their adventures to come.